Bandwidth Usage Display

For entitlements with a limited monthly data allowance, the panel shows how much VPN data the user has left. This page documents the rules that decide which unit the remaining amount is shown in (GB vs. MB) and how it is rounded (whole number vs. one decimal place).

Bandwidth usage is displayed when browser.ipProtection.bandwidth.enabled is set to true.

The formatting logic lives in formatRemainingBandwidth in browser/components/ipprotection/content/ipprotection-utils.mjs. The bandwidth-usage custom element (browser/components/ipprotection/content/bandwidth-usage.mjs) consumes it to build the progress bar and numeric strings. Unit conversions rely on the BANDWIDTH constants in browser/components/ipprotection/content/ipprotection-constants.mjs.

Units are binary

Conversions use binary (power-of-two) multiples, even though the UI labels them GB and MB:

  • BANDWIDTH.BYTES_IN_GB is 2^30 (1 GiB).

  • BANDWIDTH.BYTES_IN_MB is 2^20 (1 MiB).

All raw bandwidth values (remaining, max) are handled as BigInt byte counts sourced from the usage payload.

Remaining data: GB vs. MB

formatRemainingBandwidth(remainingBytes) returns { value, useGB }. The unit is chosen from the remaining amount alone:

  • 1 GB or more remaining → useGB: true. The value is shown in GB, rounded to one decimal place and formatted with Intl.NumberFormat (maximumFractionDigits: 1), so it is locale-aware and drops trailing zeros (30, not 30.0; 12.5 stays 12.5).

  • Less than 1 GB remaining → useGB: false. The value switches to MB and is shown as a floored whole number of MB (Math.floor(remainingBytes / BYTES_IN_MB)), with no decimals.

The useGB flag selects the localized string, so the unit in the text always matches the unit of the value:

Context

useGB: true (GB)

useGB: false (MB)

Progress bar description

ip-protection-bandwidth-left-gb-1

ip-protection-bandwidth-left-mb-1

Numeric-only view

ip-protection-bandwidth-left-this-month-gb

ip-protection-bandwidth-left-this-month-mb

Examples

  • 12.5 GB remaining → "12.5" GB.

  • 30 GB remaining → "30" GB (no decimal, because the fractional part is zero).

  • 0.9 GB remaining → 921 MB (floored: floor(0.9 * 1024)).

The monthly limit is always in GB

The maximum (maxUsage) shown alongside the remaining amount — and in the header, help text, “limit reached”, and reset strings — is always expressed in GB, regardless of how much data is left. It is computed as maxGB = max / BYTES_IN_GB and passed straight through without rounding. The default monthly limit is browser.ipProtection.bandwidth.maxInGb (50 GB).

This is why a user near the end of their allowance sees a mixed-unit string such as 500 MB of 50 GB left this month: the remaining amount has dropped below 1 GB and switched to MB, but the limit stays in GB.

When the allowance is exhausted (remaining <= 0), the numeric text is replaced by ip-protection-bandwidth-hit-for-the-month, which reports only the limit (in GB).

Progress bar value

The <progress> element measures used data, not remaining, and is always expressed in GB:

  • max is maxGB.

  • value is bandwidthUsedGB ((max - remaining) / BYTES_IN_GB) rounded to one decimal via parseFloat(...toFixed(1)).

The separate percent attribute is bucketed rather than exact, so styling can react to thresholds without exposing precise usage. bandwidthPercent returns:

  • 90 when used is at or above 90%,

  • 75 when used is at or above 75% (but below 90%),

  • otherwise Math.floor(percent).